


Participation Trophies

by Rebve



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alcohol, Drug Use, I'm always looking for the best in people, I'm not sure I've got this tagging thing right, Implied/Referenced Sex, Joseph Kavinsky is His Own Warning, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Nobody's really a villain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-17 05:35:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20615819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rebve/pseuds/Rebve
Summary: In which Kavinsky explains...and ponders dreaming his own Ronan.





	Participation Trophies

Let’s talk about Joseph.

Not _Kavinsky_.

Not _K_.

Not _me_.

It’s easier this way. Not so fucking personal.

You probably don’t trust a thing I say anyway, so just shut up and let me talk, fuckheads.

See, Joseph…Joseph had dreams.

Ha. No. I know what you’re thinking. Not like that.

These were real dreams. Plans. Things he wanted to do with his life. Teachers liked him. They told him he was smart. “Joseph, you can do anything you dream of. Your future is wide open.” Elementary school teachers always tell kids that shit. It’s not until middle school that they really start giving up.

The problem was Joseph, well, he could dream any _thing_ he could think of—an intoxicating, confusing talent he discovered could short cut hard work. Why make a friend when you could _lure_ one with a dream-begotten thing to match their every desire? In a pinch, you could conjure an essay, or even a science fair project, though you had to be careful as they sometimes came out filled with nonsense instead of the facts. You had to _know_ the material, but you could skip the actual writing down of it part.

These dream things made people admire him. More than they did when he was just Joseph Kavinsky being Joseph Kavinsky. And let’s face it, his family was _all_ about the cheat, the fraud, the quick and easy path. No one in his house was ever expounding on the value of industry, the reward of diligence. If there was a shorter, simpler way…you took it.

The pleasure derived from achieving something through one’s own effort became a forgotten thing.

Which is not to say snatching dream things was always easy.

That’s the funny thing. As he got older, and did it more often, to particular purpose, Joseph realized it took talent, persistence, _strength of mind_ to dream things right. It took imagination to believe that a dream thing could exist. Accidents became fewer, his production became more and more impossible, bigger and often otherworldly, things no one believed until he brought them into existence and said, oh yeah? Check this out.

People enjoyed his things, even if they didn’t know they were fakes, magic, call it what you will. He made them so believable, even if they were magic no one thought to question it. You could call it a talent.

But even with all that, I wasn’t always like _this_.

The rage and anger and nihilistic disregard for consequences? That didn’t come until Aglionby. Until no one called me Joseph anymore.

Okay, _now_ we can discuss Kavinsky.

Kavinsky had been ripped away from his home, his friends, everything he’d ever known. Shunted to this place in the middle of fucking nowhere. Despite everything. Despite everything he was able to do and everything he’d worked hard to do, he still wasn’t good enough. Wasn’t good enough to be valued on his own. _Loved_.

It’s embarrassing even to think that kind of shit. Stupid.

So, you know, he finally decided to be someone else. Someone who matched these lower expectations. Someone who didn’t care about anything. Someone bad.

_Things_ weren’t a problem to procure, so he dreamed himself a different look. Flashy chains and pierced ears and expensive shoes worn casually, as if you didn’t give a fuck about how much they cost. He walked a new walk to match it, cultivated facial expressions, sought out the crutches people craved and tried them so he could dream better ones…things which would elevate him to a godlike state among those who bought them from him. He’d play that part to the hilt.

_I don’t give a shit. Do what you will, all you fucking rats in your cages, I’m above you. Watch me prove it. _

It turns out, people love you more when you hate them and don’t hide it. When you present a facade of not caring, they don’t believe you, and desperately seek to burrow under your skin, to prove to themselves that you do. Prove to _you_ that you love _them_. They _want_ you to be nicer than you are. They want to be the ones to find the treasure hidden inside.

So the better you hide all that shit away, the better off you are.

Kavinsky was popular, even if it was for less than admirable merits. He didn’t want for friends, even if none of them would ever walk through fire for him. Truly, he wanted for nothing, because he could dream it, or people just handed it over to him. Stupid shit…drinks, drugs, food, bodies…he didn’t have to ask for any of that crap.

Yet there was still an asking price, he just never paid it.

_Here, Kavinsky. Take my soul but just show me yours in return._

No. Nice try, but it doesn’t work like that. Not with me.

He fucked people, literally and figuratively. Girls. Guys. More girls. More guys. He found it really didn’t matter to him. It was always hasty and meaningless, even if it was for a reason. Sometimes it was a performance, which would turn into its own release. And so cliche to say it helped him forget his troubles, but it really did.

Even when you’re an asshole of your own making, you don’t have to think about it when you’re kissing someone, when you’re barreling toward an orgasm, no matter whose hole you’re pounding. Mouth, pussy, anus. Doesn’t really make any difference. Just filling up a dark place. You fuck. You come. You clean up and move on.

He gathered his little pack of dogs around him and they did his dirty work and amused him when he got bored. Shockingly, he still went to class and school and while he was there, while no one was really looking, he learned and studied and let himself be earnest, even under drooping eyes and behind a slouching demeanor. He _was_ smart, after all, like all those old teachers insisted. When he “applied himself,” he could show it. In some way, he even enjoyed it, although it was better no one knew he was getting great grades in spite of appearances to the contrary.

Earnestness begets earnestness, and it was one of those vulnerable moments when he first saw Ronan Lynch. There was something about him, something that reminded him of the dreaming. Power and imagination radiated off his very presence, even in Latin class. And he saw him in the dream place, too. At first, Kavinsky thought he was _part_ of the dream. He didn’t dare steal a fake Ronan Lynch for his own purposes when there was already a real Ronan Lynch out there, did he? But then he realized that he was _actual_, and he was _there_ like Kavinsky was—to steal—though the forest seemed to love Ronan as it had never loved Kavinsky. It _gave_ to him, while Kavinsky had to snatch. And Kavinsky saw Ronan wander the woods not comprehending that love. As if he took it for granted. Of course he would. Look at him. Look at what he has. Even what he’s lost. Love was real to Lynch.

Fucker.

But then, it changed. He changed.

When Ronan’s father died, Kavinsky silently observed him, understanding his pain. Understanding what happens when you realize how fucked up the world really is. He watched the shift happen inside all the grief and anger and hurt. Watched his features turn sharp and his actions sharper. He loved him all the more for it, and also thrilled to it. He watched Ronan turn into something closer to him and it made him simultaneously sad and excited.

He found himself thinking about Ronan Lynch a lot.

Thinking about Ronan Lynch made him feel both less and more lonely.

Things got worse. The King of Substances used and abused his own substances—to get high and tune out, to turn on and to dream—which was never a good idea. He’d done some really awful things. He felt like he was wasting away—no, being slowly scraped away—but couldn’t stop it. He fucked up badly. Had to dream a replacement Proko to battle his loneliness. But then he knew he was fucking a fake when he did it and nothing was ever quite the same.

How pathetic to have an imaginary friend at his age.

Yeah, laugh all you want about that. I would, if it were someone else. Sometimes I do anyway. So fucking stupid.

As it was, Kavinsky barely recognized his own laugh these days. The mocking, sneering veneer he’d cultivated was more than skin deep now. He’d absorbed it…made it a part of him and that scared and mortified him. What else would go? What else would he give up to lie and steal and fake? If someone made a forgery of him, what would be left to copy?

But _Lynch_.

_Ronan_. What could he do about Ronan?

Ronan, who was like him and unlike him. Ronan, who was someone who could finally _understand_ about the dream things if only he would listen. Understand what it was like, what it felt like, how he loved it and hated it at the same time. How it made him feel powerful yet also bewildered and scared too. Ronan, who knew loss. Who was angry. Who loved fast cars and hot night air and loud, crashing music and all the things Kavinsky loved except maybe drugs…and Proko.

Yeah, I saw it.

Fuck, sorry.

_Kavinsky_. Kavinsky saw it.

_Kavinsky_ saw the way Ronan looked at Gansey, looked at Parrish, even looked at Kavinsky himself sometimes, when their eyes met across passenger doors in the night, acceleration plunging through his chest while standing still. He knew he was like him _like_ _that_, too.

He found himself wanting to impress him. Wanting to share with him, this boy who could know what it took out of him to do what he did. To be who he was. He found himself giving Ronan gifts. Dream things— normal and obvious, yet intimate—their miraculousness revealed in painstaking, minute, mundane details. Hoping Ronan would notice and admire his work. If there’s one thing a forger knows it’s value. A forger knows what makes one thing more valuable than the next. That essence that makes one thing special while another is not. And also the details to make something real, or realer than real.

But Kavinsky had long ago perfected how to make the pretend details of his _vileness_ real too. No one believed anything else from him now. Not one person. Did Ronan? No, even Ronan couldn’t see the forest for the trees. He hated Kavinsky, probably hated him more because he understood the ways they were alike. And didn’t understand the things he had that made them different. Things he took for granted and actively provoked; brothers, born and also found.

It’s like someone laughing while you cry. A slap applied to an aging bruise. The surprising spasms of agony from vomiting, shocking every time.

You have no idea how badly such a thing can hurt.

Or maybe you do. If so…poor you. Poor, pathetic you.

So anyway, when Kavinsky found him that night…the wrecked car…the nightmares…You see, the twined impulses to help Ronan and have Ronan warred within him. It was now or never. First the help. Gunshots. Dead things to be disposed of. Then Ronan, who needed convincing that the wrecked car did not equal a wrecked life. That there was a way out, if he wanted to take it.

When the knowledge that there were two of them—two dreamers—sank in, Kavinsky took Ronan home. Not to Ronan’s home, but to Kavinsky’s. He offered him alcohol to dull the pain and confusion. Lots of alcohol. Enough where he knew Ronan was only half there. Half awake, half aware, if that. Enough where Kavinsky knew he could tease and touch. Explore without Ronan objecting, or even noticing. Enough to catalogue the details from which to construct a perfect forgery.

He couldn’t help provoking Dick-Three while he was at it. To poke holes in that asshole’s perfect little world. To shake the foundations of Ronan’s co-dependent bullshit relationship. Kavinsky loved to call Ronan _Princess_ and bait him with crass references to sexual favors he liked to imagine Ronan provided for Gansey. _How many times did you blow him last night? Once for each Dick Dick Dick?_ But after that night, he knew those were just his own stupid fantasies. Amidst the drunkenness, Kavinsky had put some porn on in the theater. It was his favorite scene: an honest to God orgy with a little bit of everything for everyone. He’d watched Ronan watching it. Watched his embarrassment war with his arousal. Watched him get worked up. Coaxed him into a little side by side self-abuse, two empty theater seats safely between them for Ronan’s peace of mind. _It’s all okay, we’re just bros doing this at the same time, not together. I know. It’s the girls in this scene you’re getting off on, not the dude in the background blowing an even hotter dude. Me too, of course. _Ronan wasn’t one to back down and it was part of what Kavinsky loved about him, but he could just tell—in fact Kavinsky would bet his _life_ on it—that Ronan was a virgin. This knowledge got Kavinsky’s juices flowing for sure. It was an almost primal need at that point to pop Ronan’s cherry for him. Fuck. That’d make a mark he couldn’t wash off, wouldn’t it?

I should get a fucking medal for resisting, right?

But the next day, oh God was the next day fun. If he were an honest person, or an earnest person, or any sort of person who wasn’t half dead inside, he’d say it was the best day of his entire life. They sat in the Virginia heat, surrounded by his collection of trials and errors and sweated and dreamed and drank and dreamed and exploded things and dreamed some more. What a goddamn relief it was to finally have someone to talk to about this shit. To not do it _alone_. And yeah, he prodded Ronan and provoked him and pushed him and taught him until he could feel the energy shift. Until the sun went down and simultaneously bloomed inside of him when he could see Ronan get it. When he could see Ronan get _into_ it.

It was all there for the taking, and in those moments Ronan was paralyzed by sleep, Kavinsky took. Not much. Just a little. Touching his sun-warmed sleepy skin. That insane tattoo. Still hoping, hoping, hoping that Ronan might give willingly what Kavinsky _wanted_ as fiercely as anything he ever had. It would be nice, for once, to be gifted something rather than to have to bargain or thieve.

You know those things you protect? Those dreams you have you don’t dare even speak aloud because you want them so bad it hurts? And you’re afraid if you speak of it, it won’t come true.

I know. I know. That’s a wish, not a dream. Whatever. I suppose it might as well have been.

I couldn’t _make_ it happen, no matter how much I dreamed. Or worked. If _this_ came true it would have to be a wish.

And wishes, well… we all know wishes are bullshit, don’t we.

But yeah, Kavinsky wished. And hoped. And dreamed—but not that kind of dream, not the kind for thieving—the kind where Ronan might look at him as an equal. Where maybe Ronan would one day look at him and understand him, rather than as if he was a piece of fucking lint to be flicked off his sleeve.

As for Ronan looking at him like something desirable, well…he already did that. Kavinsky was the master of recognizing a hungry look. But he’d just spent almost 24 hours with him and he couldn’t figure out how exactly to trip that wire. How he could turn the insatiable thing in Ronan’s eyes into something all devouring. Into action.

He could imagine it… especially now that he’d categorized the very flesh and bones of Ronan. The dips and hollows. The jutting angles. The scents Ronan put on himself, and the scents that made him up. The deep bodily scents that live on heads and in groins. He still couldn’t make a true copy until he knew more. If he dreamed a Ronan now, it would be a Ronan who kissed like Kavinsky thought he should, not the way he really did. The sounds Ronan Mark II would make if Kavinsky went down on him would be Kavinsky sounds, not true honest Ronan sounds. His motions, the feeling of him, would be _close_ but not _true_.

It would be like one of those participation trophies—passing for metal but light and cheap when you touched them. Easily shattered and meaning less than nothing. And Kavinsky would not be able to bear it.

But for just those moments, he had him. He had the real Ronan. Laughing with him. Exultant with him when things started to work, but then…right when it should have been celebratory, right when Ronan should have been turning to him for a high five or a hug or any bullshit touch that could have escalated into something more—that was when he’d left.

_Left_. Gone back to his master to present him the tribute he’d dreamed—as a result of _Kavinsky’s_ training. Too eager to get back to Dick III than to spend one more fucking instant in his presence. To spare one more fucking thought about Kavinsky at all. With everything back in his grasp, Ronan had ground Kavinsky beneath his boot and spat on the ashes. He hadn’t even gotten out of the fucking car.

_Ronan_ didn’t need his companionship. _Ronan_ didn’t rejoice in knowing there was someone out there like him. Why would he? Ronan _didn’t feel alone_. Worse yet, it had been clear the other way. Ronan had been disgusted by him. _Angered_ by his existence as a dreamer. As if Kavinsky somehow dishonored the non-existent fucking profession of dream thievery.

So Kavinsky had drawn the anger and the bravado of his disguise back around him and spat right back. Only when Ronan and the sound of that fucking Camaro had been long gone had he crawled back into the Evo where no one could see him. The Mitsu was filled with all of Kavinsky’s favorite things, the smell of alcohol and hot leather and pot and Ronan. Dream junk Ronan had left behind. He had thrown the tiny glass Camaro in a cage out the window and listened to it smash.

The forest was spent, exhausted. There’d be no more dreaming that night. Otherwise he’d have been tempted to dream a shitty copy of Ronan that would stymie and perplex the real one. One who would worship Kavinsky’s every move and do whatever he wanted without question. But the truth was he didn’t need another Proko.

No. Not fucking happening.

He went home, leaving Ronan’s imperfect, hollow Camaro nestled among all of his flawed Mitsus. He even did Ronan a favor and dumped the original, totaled monstrosity for him, burying it deep along with its dead nightmares. He doubted Ronan would thank him. So simple, right? _Thanks, K. You really care. _

I crack myself up.

Whatever.

He slept. He dreamed with no purpose and yet, in his dream he was in his secret place. The place he found things. But this time he lingered, quiet. The forest did not notice him. And then Ronan was there. And they were in the Mitsu again, in the backseat, dark and close, a hidden space inside a secret place.

Kavinsky couldn’t find the energy to rile Ronan up. Couldn’t find the anger with which to provoke him. He just sat and stared. And Ronan stared back.

It’s a dream, after all.

“This is a dream,” Ronan asks/says.

“Yeah,” Kavinsky answers, flat. “It is.”

Everything seems a little hazy. “You’re different.”

“I’m tired.”

_So tired. _But still Kavinsky reaches out, dreaming. Why not? It’s only a dream.

“Let me,” Kavinsky says. It sounds too close to begging.

Fuck this. I don’t _beg_.

But in here I guess I do.

I touch Ronan’s face. Ronan flinches but doesn’t move.

I lean in, bring my lips toward Ronan’s. Ronan tilts toward me and—surprised—I pull back just out of reach. Ronan makes a little longing sound, bereft.

A sound I never would have imagined him making.

“Give,” I say/ask and Ronan leans once more, closer. I breathe it, maybe aloud, maybe not, it’s a dream, who knows, “_Please._”

The trees rustle outside. We meet in the middle. It starts soft and becomes something more. Something fast and dangerous like our cars in the night. Like a dream thing.

_Fuck_.

“Are you coming?” I ask and wake up.

And what do you know, it’s the 4th of July.

A day made for horror and explosions.

And for declarations, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive me if I made a mess of this. It's my first post and I don't feel I'm quite doing things justice. So many of you are better at this (especially at capturing "essence of Kavinsky") and inspire me. But you know, sometimes you just gotta write something.


End file.
